


we kill the flame

by elumish



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU of Kindling AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, military!Zuko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: They say you can tell a good firebender by their burns.
Comments: 58
Kudos: 1189





	we kill the flame

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kindling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24200707) by [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance). 



> This is inspired by MuffinLance's Kindling AU

They say you can tell a good firebender by their burns.

Mediocre firebenders only use their own flames, and there's no chance of being burned by those. But a good firebender, a really good firebender, they can take someone else's flame and use it, and that means getting burned.

The new kid's scar must mean that he's good enough to have taken someone else's, even if he wasn't good enough to control it. A hell of a thing to have blow up in your face, but at least it means they didn't get someone totally useless this time.

He must have pissed somebody off, though, because someone good enough to take someone else's flame doesn't get sent to the ass end of bumfuck by accident.

Rumor has it he stole the flame of some general's kid, probably some mid-level noble with just enough pull to get the kid sent away but not enough to get him killed outright.

Though they probably wouldn't kill someone young who had shown that much talent.

The kid is still in burn-fever when he arrives, barely coherent and babbling apologies. To his father, to the Fire Lord, to Agni. Half of the time he sounds so weird Kozen says he must be a colonial

(it’s High Formal Firespeak, someone mutters, and is ignored)

but the rest of the time it’s just a kid apologizing incoherently in the flat accent of Capital Firespeak.

It takes three days for the kid’s fever to subside, not helped by the fact that their division has about half a medic who can treat burns. Firebender divisions almost never get burn-trained medics, at least not out here.

He’s out of bed almost before he has his eyes open, and Kozen finds him perched on top of the highest cabinet, where there’s only about two feet of space between the top of the cabinet and the ceiling. He’s not sure how the fuck the kid is fitting up there, but he seems to be as liquid as a spider cat.

He also has half his face wrapped up, and he’s shaking so hard Kozen can see it from across the room, so Kozen sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and says, “Kid. Off the cabinet.”

The kid honest-to-Agni hisses at him like a two-headed rat viper, jamming himself even further into the corner of the ceiling, and Kozen pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s not supposed to be on Idiot New Recruit Duty. He hates Idiot New Recruit Duty.

So he goes outside and finds a long stick, then goes back into the medical tent. The kid is still up on the cabinet, because of course he is, so Kozen walks over and pokes him with the stick. Just on his shoulder, even though his face is an easier target; he’s not a total monster.

The kid stares at him.

Kozen stares back, then pokes him with the stick again. “Get off the cabinet.”

“Stop poking me,” the kid says, and at least it’s in coherent Firespeak and not any of that colonial nonsense. In fact, he sounds rather imperious, for a spider cat impersonating a human hiding on top of a cabinet.

“I’ll stop poking you if you get off that cabinet,” Kozen barters, then pokes him again. The kid bats the stick away but doesn’t set it on fire, which means he has some modicum of self control. Which is good, because Kozen isn’t near enough a good firebender to take someone else’s fire.

The kid gives him a baleful look, then somehow launches himself off of the cabinet to land neatly on his feet. He then reaches out and snatches the stick out of Kozen’s hand and snaps it in half.

It’s all very impressive, ruined immediately by him pitching over on his face, unconscious.

\--

The kid’s name is Li, and he is somehow the prickliest Idiot New Recruit the Forty-Second Division has ever seen. It’s not helped by the fact that he doesn’t seem to know his own name and so takes about four times as long to respond as anybody else they have to deal with.

Not that they can get rid of him, given that he’s clearly the best firebender in the whole division, after stealing Other Kozen’s flame when he’s using it to threaten one of the cooks.

And not that they would get rid of him, because as prickly as he is, he works longer and harder than anyone else in the division, and sometimes he disappears at night and comes back with, say, hand-drawn but very accurate maps of enemy territory.

But still. Prickly as anything, and wary too, hunched over his food like he’s expecting someone to steal it from him. He eats too fast, but with impeccable manners, and at night they can all hear him begging in the weird colonial language.

(They can all tell it’s begging, even if none of them can understand a word of it. Not even Colonial Kozen.)

They stick him on firefighter duty, because he’s young, and because they don’t mind burning Earth Kingdom stuff but sometimes their own people die and then there’s nobody to put out their flames. They’ve lost many a tent from that.

So better to have the kid on firefighter duty for the moment, and if that keeps him out of the direct fighting for a while longer, well, they’re just saving him for a bigger fight.

(It has nothing to do with the fact that he looks like everyone’s little brother.)

But they can’t keep him on firefighter duty for forever, which is when they find out that Li is absolutely insane. He won’t stay in the background and do the bare minimum, like most of the people, and he’ll get between the Earth Nation soldiers and any Fire Nation soldier at risk of being smashed by a rock.

Self-preservation and Li are not on speaking terms. Kozen isn’t sure if they have ever even met.

And after the battle, when they’re patching up their wounds and putting out the last of their fires, Li shouts a lot and then marches into the Sergeant’s tent and demands that everyone in the unit gets “real firebending training”.

Kozen would be impressed if he weren’t so amused by the equivalent of a turtle duck screaming imperiously at their Sergeant. The impression is helped by the fact that they’re all pretty sure he’s no older than fourteen, years younger than the minimum enlistment age.

He’s not the only kid who’s too young, but he might be the youngest.

But sure enough, the next day finds them all being shouted at by Li as he angrily walks them through katas they’ve never seen before. Kozen is pretty sure they’re colonial katas.

(Colonial Kozen disagrees. But what does he know anyway.)

They’re ridiculous and difficult, and most of them hate every second of it until the first time Colonial Kozen puts out a dead firebender’s fire, and then they and every firebender in nearby divisions are out and awake for the kid’s next training.

If he can train them to be good enough to take other people’s fires…

(There’s no way he did that to his own face.)

Their division loses fewer people in the next battle, and even fewer in the battle after, and they become  _ good _ instead of one of the random backwater nowhere divisions that they throw at the front lines to try to burn away a few layers of earthbenders.

And then the Crown Princess invades Ba Sing Se.

**Author's Note:**

> I figure Firespeak has varying levels of formality, like Japanese, and High Formal Firespeak is the equivalent of Classical Japanese but even less commonly spoken, so him speaking it was like the equivalent of the Jewel Voice Broadcast, when Emperor Hirohito announced that the Japanese government had surrendered to the US and nobody knew what he was talking about.


End file.
